Introduction
On the morning of Sunday, March 18, 1956, in his modest cell at Saint Tikhon’s Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, Bishop Nikolai Velimirović — at the age of 75 — was found dead. Father Vasily, a monk from the neighboring monastery, knocked on the door to summon him to the service. He received no answer. He opened the door. The aged hierarch was lying on the floor, on his knees, his head resting against the edge of the bed — with the signs of prayer beside him.
Thus reposed, far from his native Serbia, one of the most significant Orthodox hierarchs of the twentieth century. A man whom Saint John Maximovitch called, during his lifetime, “a great saint and Chrysostom of our days.” The works of Saint Nikolai Velimirović are widely translated into many languages — The Prologue of Ohrid, Prayers by the Lake, The War and the Bible, The Faith of the Saints, and many others circulate in Orthodox bookstores worldwide and are read with devotion. What remains little known, however — both in Eastern Europe and in the wider Orthodox world — is the concrete American period of his life: the ten years of exile at Libertyville and at Saint Tikhon’s Monastery, the way he served and taught there, the testimonies of those who were his disciples, and the troubling circumstances of his death — around which there continued to circulate, for decades, the hypothesis that he had been poisoned.
This article follows two intertwined threads: the American period of Saint Nikolai’s life — his years of confessing exile — and the circumstances of his end in the cell at South Canaan.
I. From Dachau to the Atlantic Shore
To understand what the American exile of Bishop Nikolai meant, we must begin with the three years he spent in captivity under German occupation.
In April 1941, when the German army invaded Yugoslavia, Bishop Nikolai — then hierarch of the Žiča Eparchy — was arrested by the Nazis. He was held under guard at Ljubostinja Monastery, then transferred to Vojlovica Monastery near Pančevo, where he was held together with Patriarch Gavrilo Dožić of Serbia until the end of 1944. In the autumn of 1944, both hierarchs were transferred to Germany, to the Dachau concentration camp, where they remained for several months.
Their status in the camp is a subject that has received different readings. They were held as Ehrenhäftlinge — “honor prisoners” — in a special section of the camp, separated from the mass of ordinary inmates. Patriarch Dožić himself later declared that both were treated in a normal manner. The Serbian ecclesiastical tradition has emphasized above all the spiritual and confessional dimension of the captivity, while academic literature insists on the special status the two hierarchs had in the camp. Bishop Nikolai himself made, in April 1946, after his arrival in America, a declaration that became famous in the Chicago Herald American: he said that “he had discovered God in the Nazi hell of the Dachau camp.” This mystical experience from captivity would later be cited in the petition for his canonization.
Toward the end of 1944, the Nazis transferred Velimirović and Dožić to Slovenia, hoping to use their authority to gain allies in the anti-communist movements. They were subsequently moved to Austria, where, in May 1945, they were liberated by the 36th Infantry Division of the United States in Tyrol.
After liberation, Patriarch Dožić returned to Yugoslavia. Bishop Nikolai did not. He passed through England, then through Austria, but refused repatriation. During this interval, Josip Broz Tito was consolidating his communist power in Belgrade, persecuting the Church, and crushing his opponents. In 1947, the Tito regime would officially ban all of Velimirović’s books. The Bishop understood that, if he returned, he would be silenced — in the best case. He chose exile. Not to save himself, but to be able to continue serving the Serbian people from outside, like so many thousands of other Serbian refugees.
In 1946, he arrived in America for the last time. He was sixty-five years old. He was physically exhausted. He had ten more years to live.
II. America — Four Arrivals, One Calling
Here an important clarification must be made, because many readers know only the final period: Saint Nikolai visited America not once, but four times in his life. The final ten-year exile rested upon an old connection, begun three decades before.
The First Arrival — 1915, an Unknown Hieromonk
In the summer of 1915, in the midst of the World War, Archimandrite Nikolai was sent by the Serbian government on a diplomatic mission to the United States. He arrived in New York, then traveled through most of the major American cities — Chicago, Kansas City, and others — giving countless lectures for the union of the Serbs and the South Slavic peoples and mobilizing American support for the Serbian cause. In New York, he collaborated with Mihailo Pupin, professor of physics at Columbia University and Consul General of Serbia. His mission had remarkable success: over 20,000 Slavic volunteers from America left for Europe, many of them going on to fight on the Salonika Front. They were called, with admiration, “Bishop Nikolai’s Third Army.”
On this first American journey, Saint Nikolai received, as hagiographic sources testify, a message in a dream from an angel of the Lord, revealing to him that he would one day return to America to help organize the nascent Serbian Orthodox community. This would be fulfilled years later.
The Second and Third Arrivals — 1917 and 1921
In December 1917, he made a brief second visit, before returning to London where he was to remain until 1919. On June 24, 1921, he arrived for the third time, as an international celebrity — by then he had received honorary doctorates from Cambridge and Glasgow. This time, he came to organize concretely the ecclesiastical structures of the diaspora. In the 1920s, he helped found Saint Sava Monastery in Libertyville, Illinois — the mother monastery of Serbian Orthodoxy in North America. An irony of Providence: this same monastery, which he had raised as a young man in the fullness of his strength, would become his place of burial forty years later.
The Fourth Arrival — the Final Exile, 1946–1956
In 1946, Velimirović arrived for the last time on American soil, this time not as a missionary, but as a refugee. He had served twenty years as Bishop of Ohrid and Žiča, was a doctor of theology, had been the first Orthodox to preach at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Now he was a sick man, marked by captivity, estranged from his country, watching his writings being burned by the new atheist regime. In June 1946, Columbia University awarded him his fifth honorary doctorate — Doctor of Sacred Theology — with the citation: “for the compassion, sanctity, and great spiritual power he has demonstrated.”
After his arrival in America, he taught for three years at Saint Sava Seminary in Libertyville, Illinois (1946–1949) — precisely the monastery he had helped bring to birth a quarter-century earlier. But here came what Orthodox historical archives record with reserve but clearly: by 1951, serious differences had arisen with Bishop Dionisije Milivojević, the hierarch of the Serbian Diocese of America and Canada. To understand the gravity of these differences, we must go back twenty years.
The Old Conflict — the Bogomoljci Movement and the 1932 Crisis
In the interwar years, Saint Nikolai led the Pravoslavna narodna hrišćanska zajednica (NHZ) — the Bogomoljci Movement (“those who pray to God”), the greatest spiritual awakening of the Serbian people in the twentieth century. In 1939, the movement numbered approximately 450 organized brotherhoods throughout Yugoslavia. Saint Nikolai was officially appointed its leader in 1921, by decision of Patriarch Dimitrije. And the editor of the Movement’s official magazine — Hrišćanska zajednica (Christian Community), printed in Kragujevac — was an ambitious young hieromonk: Dragoljub Milivojević, the future Bishop Dionisije.
The most serious testimony about what happened between them comes from Bishop Hrizostom (Vojinović) of Braničevo († 1989), spiritual disciple of Saint Justin Popović, in his volume Tihi glas (The Silent Voice, Belgrade, 1991, pp. 229–253). Bishop Hrizostom had access to the archives of the Serbian Holy Synod and recorded two facts of exceptional gravity:
First: Before 1932, a representative of a rival federation of Orthodox Christian brotherhoods had filed with the Serbian Holy Episcopal Synod a 267-page complaint against the Hieromonk Dionisije personally. The complaint was documented with substantial annexes. Bishop Hrizostom, evaluating the matter retrospectively, writes with bitterness: “It is perhaps a great pity that this complaint was not taken seriously at the time by anyone, and that no one read it in full. Had this been done, perhaps we would later have been spared certain great troubles and turmoil…” — a clear allusion to the American Schism of 1963.
Second: In 1932, the crisis broke out openly. Bishop Hrizostom records: “There had already been certain misunderstandings and disagreements between the magazine’s editor, Hieromonk Dionisije, and the leader of the Movement, Bishop Nikolai. In 1932 these intensified in particular, and in that year no annual council was even convened.”
Dionisije’s Institutional Coup: Instead of the annual council presided over by Saint Nikolai, Dionisije convened on his own, on August 29, 1932, approximately two hundred delegates at Rakovica Monastery, presiding personally over this conference and conferring upon it the prerogatives of a council. Moreover — before this, Dionisije had personally written to Patriarch Varnava, asking him to take the leadership of the Movement in place of Saint Nikolai, on the grounds that the Saint “had not been in communication with the NHZ Headquarters for half a year.” Patriarch Varnava actually came to Rakovica, gave an address, and accepted to take the leadership of the Movement. Bishop Hrizostom adds: “As soon as the conference resumed its work, the question arose: is it not, in fact, the intent of this conference to remove Bishop Nikolai?”
Saint Nikolai’s response was exactly the one he would repeat two decades later in America: silent withdrawal, without public polemic. The Saint distanced himself from the NHZ Headquarters for half a year. In the January 1933 issue of the magazine, under the diplomatic formula “due to his heavy workload at the seminary” — a euphemism masking what had happened behind the scenes — Dionisije was removed from the editorial post.
In the autumn of 1933, at the great council at Kovilj Monastery in Bačka, Saint Nikolai appeared alongside Patriarch Varnava — official reconciliation. But Dionisije, from that moment on, “broke off all communication with the magazine and never collaborated in its pages again” (Hrizostom). The resentment remained — and crossed the ocean.
The New Tension of 1951
Upon the old tension, after the war, a new one was superimposed. Bishop Dionisije was beginning to accuse the Serbian Mother Church (the Patriarchate of Belgrade) of collaboration with the communist Tito regime — a position which Velimirović, although himself firmly anti-communist, did not share in the same radical form. He knew too well the difference between a Church under pressure and a Church surrendered. Thus, in 1951, twenty years after the Rakovica crisis, the same pattern repeated itself: Saint Nikolai as recognized spiritual leader, and Dionisije attempting to remove or marginalize him through institutional maneuvers.
The most telling testimony about how this tension was practically translated comes from Father Sergei Mayevsky, a professor at Saint Tikhon’s Seminary, former secretary and librarian of Patriarch Varnava of Serbia, who had known Velimirović for nearly twenty-five years. Mayevsky is the very man who, upon arriving at Saint Tikhon’s, invited Velimirović to teach there. Here is what he recorded about the Vladika’s reaction to the invitation:
“I was astonished by his reaction to my words: he suddenly began to weep like a child, began to thank me warmly, and repeated how difficult it was for him that Vladika Dionisije was behaving badly toward him […]. The Vladika had the feeling that he was being boycotted by his own people and by Vladika Dionisije. This was an extremely heavy blow to Vladika Nikolai […]. He had never been at the same time exiled from his homeland and an alien to his own compatriots.”
The aged Bishop of Ohrid and Žiča — former prisoner at Dachau, survivor of the Nazi hell, “the Serbian Chrysostom” at the height of his international recognition — was weeping like a child from the pain of being spiritually persecuted by his own Serbian Bishop in America. It is a profound spiritual lesson: even a saint can suffer not only external persecution (Hitler, Tito), but also internal persecution (from brothers in the faith). Velimirović never responded polemically. He wept once, in secret, before a friend. And he moved quietly, poorly, humbly, to a Russian monastery, without making the reason public. Contemporary Serbian sources note that “Bishop Nikolai moved in 1951 from the Serbian Saint Sava Monastery in Libertyville to the Russian Saint Tikhon’s Monastery in Pennsylvania without any [public] explanation” — the hierarchical silence of a man who chose humility over polemic.
The historical irony would become complete later: in 1963, Bishop Dionisije himself would separate from Belgrade and proclaim the “Free Serbian Orthodox Church of America,” triggering the American Schism that would last nearly thirty years, until 1992. But in 1951, when the conflict was still in its incipient phase, Velimirović was practically caught in the middle — between a Mother Church under communism and an overzealous American Bishop. He chose to withdraw gently, without polemic.
Thus it came about that, in 1951, he settled at Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk Monastery and Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania — the oldest Orthodox monastery in North America, of Russian jurisdiction (under the Russian Metropolia of America, the future OCA). There he spent the last five years of his life. An important detail for clarification: Saint Tikhon’s is not a ROCOR monastery (the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia), but a monastery of the Russian-American Metropolia which, after 1970, would become the OCA. At ROCOR (Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY) Saint Nikolai was only a guest lecturer, not a permanent professor.
In parallel, he gave lectures at Saint Vladimir’s Seminary in Crestwood, New York and at Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, New York (the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia — ROCOR). He spoke seven languages fluently. He used each of them in his missionary service: he wrote articles in Russian for the God-seekers at Saint Tikhon’s, preached in English, wrote in Serbian for the diaspora, used German and French in theological correspondence.
III. The American Work — Ten Years of Pan-Orthodox Mission
Saint Nikolai arrived in America in April 1946 and remained on American soil until his repose in March 1956 — almost ten uninterrupted years of missionary work. These years were neither retreat nor retirement; they were, paradoxically, one of the most intense and fruitful periods of his life, despite the health problems remaining from his captivity at Dachau. The ecclesiastical chroniclers of the time observe with wonder that “this final chapter of his life gives little evidence that Bishop Nikolai was now over seventy years old.”
1946–1951: New York, Libertyville, and the Books in English
His first American months were spent at the Saint Sava Cathedral in New York, where he was received as a refugee hierarch by the Serbian diaspora community. From this New York base, he began to preach and lecture in many Orthodox — and not only Orthodox — churches in the New York area, which, for a Serbian refugee hierarch, was real apostolic mission: to bring the voice of Orthodoxy into an America still predominantly Protestant and Catholic, with an Orthodox consciousness fragmented into separate ethnic jurisdictions.
In the autumn of 1946 he began to teach at the Saint Sava Seminary in Libertyville, Illinois — the seminary of the Serbian Orthodox Church in America. He taught here for three years (1946–1949), forming the generation of postwar Serbian-American priests. The Saint Sava Monastery at Libertyville, where his initial grave is also located, was his first lasting dwelling on American soil.
In these five years of the interval (1946–1951) — amid teaching at the seminary and preaching on the East Coast — Saint Nikolai wrote three essential books, one of them directly in English:
- “The Faith of the Saints” (1949) — the first Orthodox catechism in the English language published by a Serbian hierarch for the American-born Serbs. Saint Nikolai realized that the new American Orthodox generation no longer reads Church Slavonic, Serbian, or Greek — and that, without a catechism in English, Orthodoxy would become merely ethnic nostalgia for immigrants. This catechism remains today one of the reference texts of English-speaking American Orthodoxy.
- “The Universe as Signs and Symbols” (1950) — an essay in English on Orthodox mysticism, written for the Western reader formed in Protestant and Catholic philosophy. This is apologetic work — it explains the mystical experience of the Orthodox Tradition to the educated American reader.
- “The Unattainable Land” / *Zemlja Nedodjia* (1950) — a work in Serbian, theological meditation for the Serbs in the diaspora.
In 1951, his last book written at Libertyville is “The Life of Saint Sava” — the biography of the first great Serbian hierarch, disciple of the Holy Mountain, the first Archbishop of Serbia. The attentive reader notices a profound coincidence: Saint Sava (13th century) died in a foreign land, far from Serbia, after praying to God “to let him die in a foreign land.” Professor Veselin Kesich later observed that this book “reveals something about Bishop Nikolai himself in his meditation on the end of Saint Sava’s life” — a conscious prefiguring of his own death which would come five years later, also in a foreign land.
Missionary at Three Seminaries: Saint Tikhon’s, Jordanville, Saint Vladimir’s
In 1951, Saint Nikolai moved to Saint Tikhon’s Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania — where he would remain the final five years of his life. But his American work was not limited to a single institution. Despite his age (over 70) and frail health, Saint Nikolai was a constant guest lecturer at the three major centers of postwar American Orthodoxy:
1. Saint Tikhon’s Seminary (South Canaan, Pennsylvania) — the institution of the Russian Orthodox Church in America (later becoming OCA, the Orthodox Church in America). Here he was successively professor, dean, and rector, after the death of the former rector, Bishop Iona.
2. Holy Trinity Monastery at Jordanville, New York — the center of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), keeper of the Russian hesychast Tradition and of the Optina spirituality. Here Saint Nikolai was a guest lecturer, forming the generation of ROCOR Russian monks. Here also he met and formed in continuous spiritual communion Saint John Maximovitch — Saint John would call him in life “a great saint and Chrysostom of our days.”
3. Saint Vladimir’s Seminary (Crestwood, New York) — the intellectual institution of American Orthodoxy, founded by Russian theologians of the exile (Florovsky, Schmemann, Meyendorff). Saint Nikolai was a guest lecturer here, in parallel with his work at Saint Tikhon’s. Father Alexander Schmemann, the Dean of the Seminary, would later call him “Apostle and Missionary of the New Continent.”
This is a unique observation in postwar American Orthodoxy: Saint Nikolai Velimirović was one of the few hierarchs of the time who served in communion with all three Orthodox jurisdictions in America — Serbian, Russian ROCOR, Russian OCA — without entering into the jurisdictional polemics that divided American Orthodoxy of the time. Sanctity transcends jurisdictions; pilgrims to Saint Nikolai came from all three communities.
This is why, today, Saint Nikolai is venerated equally by the OCA, by ROCOR, and by the Serbian American Diocese — and why his icon appears on the frescoes of “All American Saints” alongside Saint Tikhon of Moscow, Saint Innocent of Alaska, Saint Herman of Alaska, Saint John Maximovitch.
The five final years at Saint Tikhon’s (1951–1956) are the heart of Saint Nikolai’s American exile. Here he was — in this order, as the monastery’s chronicles testify — first professor, then dean, finally rector of the Seminary, after the death of the former rector, Bishop Iona.
The direct testimonies preserved in the monastery’s archive (published in The Tikhonaire in 1986 and 1988) are eloquent regarding the way he was seen and felt.
Spiritual Father of the Monks
The chronicle says simply: the aged Bishop was “an elder for the monks of Saint Tikhon’s,” “a loving father whom the students will never forget,” “an embodiment of humility.” He lived among the monks, ate at the common refectory, followed the daily liturgical rule. He did not behave as a former hierarch in exile with expectations of protocol. He behaved as a monk among monks.
He repeatedly expressed, to those around him, the desire to be buried there: “It is more fitting that I be buried here, where I have taught, prayed, and served God.”
The Hesychast Pedagogy of Daily Life
His lectures were, according to the testimony of the monastery, “profoundly simple, informal, and very warm.” His requirements were elementary: he taught, the student learned, he corrected. He spoke seven languages fluently, but at Saint Tikhon’s he insisted on teaching only in English — at a time when the vast majority of seminary courses were in Slavonic or in old Russian. This decision caused friction with other faculty members. The Bishop did not yield. His argument was pastoral: future American priests had to hear theology in their mother tongue, otherwise they would repeat it without truly understanding it.
He extended this practice into the monastery church as well. He preached most often in English. Elderly Serbian or Russian parishioners often complained. His answer was invariably: “You have heard and learned enough. It is time for them [the seminarians] to learn something.”
His pedagogy was hesychast in an authentic sense: not a didactically systematized theology, but a permanent transfiguration of daily life into spiritual material. Any conversation became an example. Any natural phenomenon — living Scripture. A scene preserved by the chronicle: one day in class, a student complained that the day was gloomy because of the rain. The aged Bishop quietly approached the window, looked outside for a while, then said:
“What is rain? It is like Christ, who was Himself sent by the Father from Heaven to water a thirsty earth.”
His vocabulary never rose above the capacity of his listeners. He could speak in concepts of philosophy of religion at Cambridge — and had done so, lecturing at Westminster twenty years earlier. Now, at the monks’ refectory, he spoke simply, parabolically, always with direct reference to Holy Scripture.
The American Literary Work
In his ten American years, Saint Nikolai continued to write with an astonishing productivity for a sick man in his seventies. Several concrete works from this period:
- Žetve Gospodnje (The Harvests of the Lord), 1952
- Kasijana — a work on Christian love, 1952
- Articles and homilies published in Russian for the God-seekers at Saint Tikhon’s
- Continuation of work on the English version of The Prologue of Ohrid — his crowning work
About The Prologue of Ohrid, more should be said. Originally written in Serbian in the 1920s, when he was Bishop of Ohrid (hence the name), it is a monumental daily synaxarion — lives of saints, hymns, reflections, and homilies for every day of the year. In the current English edition, published by Sebastian Press, it has 1,624 pages in two volumes. Today, it is one of the most widely read Orthodox books in the world, present in the homes of Orthodox believers from Australia to Alaska. His other great work, Prayers by the Lake (Molitve na jezeru), also written during the Ohrid period (1922), continues to be read as a modern Psalter — its prayerful prose evokes, by some testimonies, “the Psalms of King David, the poems of Saint Gregory the Theologian, and the hymns of Saint Symeon the New Theologian.”
How He Was Seen by the Great Orthodox Theologians of His Time
Saint Nikolai was not a marginal figure in the American theological space. Two of the most significant Orthodox fathers of the twentieth century who lived on American soil esteemed him explicitly:
- Saint John Maximovitch, Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco — who had been a young instructor at a seminary in Velimirović’s Žiča diocese and knew him directly — called him “a great saint and Chrysostom of our days, whose significance for the Orthodoxy of our times can be compared only with that of Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky. Both were universal teachers of the Orthodox Church.”
- Father Alexander Schmemann, dean of Saint Vladimir’s Seminary, called him “Apostle and Missionary of the New Continent.”
This is the source, in fact, of the title under which he is known today in the Serbian Orthodox Church and in the American diaspora: “the New Chrysostom” or “the Serbian Chrysostom.” The comparison concerns primarily the charism of speech — oratory, homiletics, the surpassing gift of speaking in living icons. It should not be understood as theological equivalence with Saint John Chrysostom — the exegetical and liturgical corpus of the great Father of the fourth century is a category apart. But as recognition of the oratorical charism and of pastoral fruitfulness, the title comes from men who knew him directly and did not use it lightly.
IV. The Last Liturgy and the End on His Knees
On Saturday, March 17, 1956 (new calendar; March 5 on the Julian calendar), the aged Bishop served his last Divine Liturgy. The chronicles say that “everything was unusually beautiful.” After the service, at the monks’ refectory, he gave a brief address, bowed his head deeply, made three prostrations, and murmured humbly:
“Forgive me, brethren.”
Then he left. Abbot Athanasius, who preserved this testimony, adds: “This was something special, for he had never done so before.”
That evening, Bishop Nikolai withdrew to his cell at the Seminary.
On Sunday morning, March 18, Father Vasily went to summon him. He knocked. He received no answer. He opened the door. He found the aged man lying on the floor, on his knees, his head resting against the edge of the bed. The witness-bearing traditions differ on a single detail: some record that in his hand was the Molitvenik (the prayer book), others — particularly the direct testimony of Father Mayevsky — speak of the Russian prayer rope given to him by the nuns. What is certain is that the icon of the last hour is that of a bishop in prayer.
The official chronicle of Saint Tikhon’s Monastery, published after nearly three decades, formulates with a reserve that asks for no more than what was seen:
“He had probably died between seven and eight in the morning. The aged Vladika led a holy life and worked in a holy manner. Many see in this death a holy repose, for he reposed on his knees and in prayer.”
The next day, the Serbian Bishop Dionisije served the first memorial service in the monastery church — the canonical duty of the local Serbian Bishop for a Serbian hierarch fallen asleep, regardless of any prior tensions. There followed services at Saint Sava Cathedral in New York, then at Lackawanna. On March 27, 1956, he was buried — as his family and the Serbian diaspora had wished — in the cemetery of Saint Sava Monastery in Libertyville, Illinois, beside the church that he himself had helped to raise over three decades before. Forty-two Serbian priests officiated at the funeral, in the presence of a great multitude from the diaspora.
He was in a foreign land. He was — as the chronicler would later remark — just as Saint Sava, Enlightener of Serbia, had been: fallen asleep far from his native land.
V. The Death of Saint Nikolai: The Testimony of Vladimir Mayevsky and Its Limits
The version officially received by the Church is clear and sober: on the morning of March 18, 1956, Saint Nikolai Velimirović was found in his cell at Saint Tikhon’s Seminary, on his knees in prayer. The day before, he had served his last Divine Liturgy, and at the refectory, to the astonishment of the monks, he had deeply bowed his head and said: “Forgive me, brethren.” The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) preserves this testimony as part of his liturgical and spiritual life: the last Liturgy, the word of forgiveness, then the repose in prayer.
There exists, however, a more detailed — and more troubling — testimony from one who was a professor at Saint Tikhon’s Seminary in that very period: Father Vladimir Mayevsky, former secretary and librarian of Patriarch Varnava of Serbia for a quarter-century, refugee in America after the war, the very man who had invited Velimirović to teach at Saint Tikhon’s. His testimony, entitled “The Death of Vladika Nikolai,” was published in the journal Srpski misionar (The Serbian Missionary) of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville (ROCOR jurisdiction), in March–April 1958 — less than two years after the repose. Mayevsky was not at the monastery on the very day of the death, since he had departed on a journey. He reconstructed the events from the direct testimonies of those present and published this chronology with the standing of a historical document.
Here is how he relates it:
In the autumn and winter of 1955–1956, “there came to us at the monastery a certain Serb, a new émigré. The Vladika was not particularly pleased by this and would distance himself from him, not having full confidence.” After an absence of more than a year, this Serb reappeared at the monastery “in time of harsh winter and a great blizzard, on the eve of the Vladika’s sudden death, namely on Saturday, March 17, 1956.”
Because of the heavy snow, the aged Bishop had moved for a few days into the Seminary building, closer to the church. On Saturday evening, after the monks’ refectory and the word of forgiveness, he spoke with the seminarians about the Liturgy for the next day. He handed several signed papers to the seminary secretary. Then he withdrew to his cell.
“Around 10 in the evening, the seminarians saw the Serb enter the Vladika’s bedroom. After 11 in the evening, they saw him entering the washroom with the coffee utensils, telling them that he wanted to prepare black coffee for the Vladika. The seminarians were greatly surprised that so late at night the Vladika wished to drink coffee, which he had recently avoided completely on his doctors’ advice. When and how the Serb left the Vladika, no one saw.” (Mayevsky, Srpski misionar, 1958)
“Here ceases,” Mayevsky observes, “all that is generally known about the last hours of Vladika Nikolai.”
On Sunday morning, at 7:00, all the seminarians left for the distant mission. The Vladika was to serve in the monastery church. At the appointed hour, the bell rang. The Vladika did not appear. Father Vasilije went to the cell, knocked — no answer. He returned to inform the Abbot.
And at that very moment — “after 15–20 minutes” — the telephone rang. Mayevsky records with astonishment:
“It became known that the Serbian diocesan Bishop [Dionisije], who had never before taken an interest in the health of Vladika Nikolai, was suddenly inquiring about his health. Everyone in the monastery was amazed, for everyone knew that never before had such concern been shown toward Vladika Nikolai.”
The Abbot opened the door by force. The aged Bishop lay on the floor, beside the bed, in his nightclothes, with his feet toward the door and his head toward the window. “On the Vladika’s head a small wound could be seen, and in his hand he had the prayer rope given to him by the Russian nuns.”
The doctor summoned confirmed the death, which had occurred several hours earlier. “The cause of death, without an autopsy, he could not determine. The Serbs who arrived later requested that the autopsy not be carried out.”
The next day, Bishop Dionisije himself arrived at the monastery. Mayevsky records the scene that astonished all those present:
“In the presence of the monks and seminarians who had returned, he cried out beside the coffin of the deceased: ‘In life you tormented me much… and after death you forced me to travel in foul weather.'”
Then Dionisije, together with several Serbs who accompanied him, entered the Vladika’s rooms and — in Mayevsky’s words — “subjected them to total devastation: they gathered up the suitcases and trunks, seizing everything that fell into their hands, especially the Vladika’s correspondence and his notes. They loaded them into their cars and drove off.” On his return, Mayevsky found the Vladika’s rooms in a state “such as I had never seen in my life — everything overturned, hundreds of letters, sheets, boxes, and other things lying on the floor.”
Mayevsky adds a grave observation: “I do not doubt at all that in a man such as Vladika Nikolai, with his character, there could not but have been a written will for the event of his death, or even a formal testament. Of this I am convinced not only by his character, but also by other circumstances. But of this — and of those — at another time.” — an addition to which he never publicly returned.
And finally, there is the testimony of Abbess Paraskeva, which circulated in the Serbian community:
“Abbess Paraskeva affirmed that the mysterious stranger suspected of the murder was, in fact, a cleric of Vladika Dionisije. And that with her was the letter of repentance of this man, in which he asks Saint Joanicius to intercede with the Lord for the forgiveness of a certain terrible sin of his. The Abbess added that on the lips of the reposed Vladika there was foam, as in a man who has been poisoned.”
A Patristic Weighing
What is the spiritual meaning of these facts?
Mayevsky, as a historical witness, does not affirm the poisoning as a proven fact. He does not name the visitor. He records details which he himself characterizes as observable: the hour of the visit, the nocturnal coffee against medical prescription, the absence of an autopsy at the request of the Serbs, the suspicious telephone call of Bishop Dionisije at the very hour of the discovery of the death, the disturbing outcry beside the coffin, Dionisije’s behavior with regard to the Saint’s notes. All these are facts recorded by Mayevsky in 1958, soon after the event, on the basis of what he had learned from those present. They have documentary weight, but they do not amount to judicial proof of a poisoning. The conclusion is left to the reader.
Abbess Paraskeva — the only voice who identifies the visitor as “a cleric of Dionisije” (and therefore not Dionisije himself) — speaks however from hearsay, not as a direct witness. And Father Doctor Velibor Džomić, a contemporary historian of the Serbian Church, rejects the thesis of poisoning:
“Propaganda. The fact that Vladika Nikolai was poisoned — there is no question of it. He was gravely ill with a heart condition.”
There are therefore two possible readings, both with ecclesiastical sources:
The sober reading: The aged Bishop was gravely ill with a heart condition, marked by Dachau, by the pain of being persecuted by Bishop Dionisije, exiled and weary. He drank a coffee he should not have drunk, suffered a cardiac crisis in the night, fell, struck his head, leaned forward in prayer, and died. The rest — the Serbian visitor, Dionisije’s telephone call, the seizure of documents — are coincidences or the consequences of ordinary human malice, not of a planned assassination.
The tragic reading: There are sufficient facts documented by Mayevsky (historical witness, ROCOR source 1958) which leave open the possibility of an evil intent. Abbess Paraskeva’s testimony, with the letter of repentance of the alleged assassin, gives this reading a foundation — without constituting judicial proof.
The Church officially does not honor Saint Nikolai as a poisoned martyr. This predicate does not exist in the Synaxarion. He is honored as a confessor for the years of imprisonment at Vojlovica and Dachau, for the assumed exile, for the firm silence in the face of the atheist regime. And as “the Serbian Chrysostom” for the pastoral fruitfulness of the ten American years.
The seal of his death, regardless of the interpretation of the circumstances, is prayer. He was found on the floor, in nightclothes, with the Russian prayer rope in his hand, in the position of a man who had knelt down to pray or was trying to do so. This is the final icon which Tradition places upon his life.
VI. The Return Home
Saint Nikolai had remained buried at Libertyville for thirty-five years. In May 1991, after the fall of the communist regime, his relics were brought back with great honor to Serbia, to Lelić, his native village — on the feast of Saint Basil of Ostrog. They were placed in a chapel, beside the tomb of his disciple, Father Justin Popović, which he had prepared in advance. On May 19, 2003, the Holy Episcopal Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church decided unanimously to enroll Bishop Nikolai in the ranks of the saints, as Saint Hierarch Nikolai of Ohrid and Žiča; the solemn proclamation of the canonization took place on May 24, 2003, at Saint Sava Cathedral in Belgrade. His feast: March 18 (March 5 on the Julian calendar) and, as a second feast, May 3 (May 20 on the Julian calendar) — the day of the translation of his relics.
How He Is Honored in America
For American Orthodox, Saint Nikolai is not merely a Serbian saint brought by circumstances onto American soil. He is perceived as a North American Saint. His face appears on the icons and frescoes of “All American Saints” — for example on the fresco “Synaxis of the Saints of North America” at Holy Trinity Church in Parma, Ohio, where he is depicted as “Saint Nikolai of South Canaan.” There are similar icons at Saint Nicholas Church in Portland and at other parishes. The American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of North America (ACROD) explicitly venerates him as “the Serbian Chrysostom” and as “a man who lived and walked among us.”
VII. The Meaning of a Death
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apostle Paul exhorts us:
“Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct.” (Hebrews 13:7)
Saint Nikolai of Ohrid and Žiča ended his life on the floor of a small cell, in a Russian monastery in Pennsylvania, far from Lelić, far from Žiča, far from all the places he had loved. He knelt down. He began to pray. His heart ceased. No one saw him repose. In the morning, the monk who came looking for him found him so.
This is the final icon of his life. Regardless of the mysteries that will never be unraveled, regardless of the voice of the Serbian community that speaks of the visitor in the cassock and the disappeared suitcase, regardless of the critical voice of Father Velibor Džomić who speaks of a grave heart condition — this icon remains. The Bishop on his knees, in prayer, at the moment when his soul departed his body.
Thus reposed “the Serbian Chrysostom.” Thus ended a century of service — from the village of Lelić to Bern, Oxford, and Cambridge; to London where he was the first Orthodox to preach at St. Paul’s Cathedral; to Saint Naum’s Monastery in Ohrid where he shepherded for sixteen years; to the camp of Dachau where, as he himself testified, “he discovered God”; to Libertyville where he raised a monastery in his youth and was buried in his old age; to Saint Tikhon’s where he served the last decade and where he reposed.
Far from Serbia. Close to Christ.
Like Saint Sava, the Enlightener of Serbia, who reposed in a foreign land, Saint Nikolai too fulfilled the calling of the apostolic word: “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come” (Hebrews 13:14). The American exile was, paradoxically, the place of his final spiritual fulfillment. There he wrote his last books. There he formed his last disciples. There he served his last Liturgy. There he knelt for the last time.
Holy Hierarch Father Nikolai, pray to God for us.
Principal Sources
American sources:
- Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk Monastery, St. Nikolai Velimirovich at St. Tikhon’s Seminary (published in The Tikhonaire, 1986 and 1988)
- Orthodox Church in America (OCA), Repose of Saint Nikolai of Zhicha
- American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese (ACROD), The Serbian Chrysostom – St. Nicholas Velimirovich +1956
- Canadian Orthodox History Project, Saint Nikolaj (Velimirovic) — fundamental source for the details concerning the tensions with Bishop Dionisije Milivojević (1951) and for the move to Saint Tikhon’s
- Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich: Serbia’s New Chrysostom, published by Orthodox America / OrthoChristian.com
- Chicago Herald American, April 1946, Bishop Reveals Persecution of Church under Tito Regime
Serbian sources:
- Bishop Hrizostom (Vojinović) of Braničevo († 1989), spiritual disciple of Saint Justin Popović, “Narodna hrišćanska zajednica: Nastanak i razvoj Bogomoljačkog pokreta” (The People’s Christian Community: The Birth and Development of the Bogomoljci Movement), in the volume Tihi glas (The Silent Voice, Belgrade, 1991, pp. 229–253), reprinted on pravda.rs (September 24, 2025) — primary ecclesial source for the Velimirović-Dionisije conflict of 1932 at Rakovica Monastery, including for the 267-page complaint filed at the Serbian Holy Synod against Dionisije
- Father Vladimir Mayevsky, “Smrt vladike Nikolaja” (The Death of Vladika Nikolai), published in the journal Srpski misionar (The Serbian Missionary), Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY (ROCOR jurisdiction), no. 2, March–April 1958 — primary source: the testimony of the professor who invited Saint Nikolai to Saint Tikhon’s Seminary and reconstructed the circumstances of his death two years after the event
- Stil.kurir.rs, Sumnjiva smrt Vladike Nikolaja Velimirovića (2025) — integral citation of the Mayevsky 1958 text
- Srpska Info / Novosti / opstinasokolac.net, Da li je vladika Nikolaj Velimirović zaista otrovan? (2025), testimony of Fr. Dr. Velibor Džomić
- Lepote Srbije / Alo.rs / Maxportal.hr, Misteriozna smrt i zagonetan kraj svetog Nikolaja Velimirovića (2023, 2024) — restatement of Mayevsky’s testimony regarding the persecution of Saint Nikolai by Bishop Dionisije
- Mladenovčani.com, Dionisije Milivojević 1898–1979 — biographical details regarding the hierarchical conflict
- Bishop Artemije Radosavljević, Novi Zlatoust. Episkop Nikolaj 1880–1956 (Belgrade, 1986)
- Bishop Maxim Vasiljević (ed.), Treasures New and Old. Writings by and about St. Nicolai Velimirovic, Sebastian Press, 2010
- Charalampos Andralis, Άγιος Νικόλαος Βελιμίροβιτς. Εκτενής Βίος & Ανθολόγιο Λόγων, Έαρ Publishing, Athens, 2020 (288 pp.) — the complete Greek biography
Testimonies of contemporary saints:
- Saint John Maximovitch, Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco (on Velimirović as “a great saint and Chrysostom of our days”)
- Father Alexander Schmemann (on Velimirović as “Apostle and Missionary of the New Continent”)